Latham Picks Up Bybee’s (Considerable) Legal Tab

For Law Blog’s purposes, there is no gift quite like the gift of free representation. And when a federal appellate judge is on the receiving end, well, that really gets our motor running.

The National Law Journal’s David Ingram reports that from 2007 to 2010 Ninth Circuit Judge Jay Bybee accepted legal and consulting help totaling $3.4 million, as he fought allegations that as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel he blessed sloppy legal analysis that led to the so-called “torture memos.”

Nearly all the assistance — $3.3 million –came from Los Angeles-based Latham & Watkins, whose lawyers used to appear before Bybee (pictured, right) in Ninth-Circuit courtrooms, according to Ingram, who obtained Bybee’s financial disclosures through a . . .